Our ancestors were great

By RK Rishikesh Sinha

(views are personal)

The greatest advent of the 21st century is that all and sundry Ram, Shyam, Jodhu, Modhu questions, criticise, likes, and comments relentlessly. However, in this cacophony, things become distasteful when he or she fails to respect the intellect of our ancestors.

You and I have heard; even read innumerable times, that due to our ancestors inherent problems like dola-doli, lack of unity, weak role in the then political set up, lack of historical records, we the Bishnupriya 

Manipuris, are counted in the backward community bracket in India.

In opposite to it, in this hullabaloo, we forget that it is due to our ancestors’ farsightedness, ingenuity, and intellect, that we, the Bishnupriya Manipuris, are still thriving (‘existing’) and progressing. It is only due to their better understanding of the time in which they lived, that today I am writing, and you are reading this piece. Things get more bizarre and painful, when the comparison parameter is used. “So and so community is here….we are here……..”. (I am refraining from mentioning those communities. Since chances are there that the article would go wrong)

Yes, we’re living in the 21st century, we are impatient, we seek instant gratification; we need success and recognition at a click of button. But somewhere, before using the statistical tool, we miss, forget, even failed to decipher the grand message (say information) that they were passing through generation.

For a moment, if we imagine from the period when our forefathers left present-day Manipur and settled in different parts of the Indian sub-continent to till today. It is astonishing, and it is full of amazement:

(1) how they managed their affairs to the host regions (as we were new to that particular region and population);

(2) how they maintained relationship with the then political set up;

(3) how they faced the social and political upheavals and the stand they took (we all know that the region saw many social and political changes)

Not to mention, if we doubt on their intellect and decisions today (just saying that there is no history and proof stuff); imagine, their one wrong step (again repeating “one wrong step”) would have either made us defunct (there are many communities which falls in this category) or strangulated (there are again many communities which falls in this category). But today, we find they were smart, and were ahead of times. They were great, and no proof is required for that. All the decisions/ stands that they took were correct. They definitely had inherent mechanism/ knowledge of seeing things and interpreting it, and taking actions on it.

To the historical stuff, that we people and others claim that we as a community don’t have volume of historical contents, they failed to mention the ignorance on their part of their ancestors if they were rulers and kings of the then period. To put it bluntly, they were not like British soldiers scientist who ‘mapped’ the Indian sub-continent before their endeavour, and they were also not like the Arabs and the Chinese (they brought many traditions to the writings of history). Still, to my amazement, there exist a government website, which mentions agriculture, horticulture, poultry and livestock, i.e., all possible information, but not the statistics of Bishnupriya Manipuri population!

To conclude, things were very well managed by our ancestors (include our immediate older generation), they never took drastic, erratic, and wrong decisions. Had they taken any wrong decision, the result would have been in front of us. Unfortunately, there is not any.